A scoreline to stick in your scrapbook - indeed it will be stuck, reluctantly, into Leicester's record book – but it means nothing. Leicester played like a second team, because that is what they were. The Tigers have been ravaged by injuries, they have been ravaged by the demands of one of their old boys – one Martin Johnson – and now their very home, their very soul, has been ravaged by Saracens.

Having never won here until the season before last, Sarries have now won three in a row. This time the ravaging was such that they crashed into the innermost nooks and crannies of Welford Road, the kind of parts the Tigers have never exposed to invaders in all their livelong years. Saracens could not believe their luck, ushered in by a Leicester defence that just did not know how to say no once their "guests" had strung together a couple of half-coherent proposals.

It means nothing. Leicester have 12 away at the World Cup and a further six first-team players injured. They may have lost more – Anthony Allen, one of their few first-teamers, went off with a shoulder injury in the first half; Julian Salvi, a rare shining light for them, was hobbling at the end; and Mathew Tait's search for a decent stretch uninterrupted by injury goes on, he also off by the end.

"We've got I don't know how many missing," said Richard Cockerill, Leicester's director of rugby. "It's clearly not our best side. I can't manage that. I can spend the salary cap. We're a plc, we're self-sufficient, we don't lose £6.5 million [as Saracens did last year]. We can't do what Saracens do. In that regard we're poor relations."

Not that Saracens are unaffected. They have eight at the World Cup and another "four or five" injured, according to Mark McCall, their director of rugby. But they retained enough of a spine, spiced up with a few promising youngsters, to inflict the heaviest defeat copped by a Leicester side at Welford Road and their second heaviest defeat in the Premiership.

There was devil in them too, because, when awarded a penalty with time up, they opted to kick for goal, just to notch up the big five-o. Owen Farrell, whose 20th birthday it was, duly obliged. But by then Saracens had sliced up Leicester every which way, scoring six tries.

In the middle of it all was Ernst Joubert. It is fashionable in the Premiership at the moment to play the "such and such a country must have a hell of a squad if they can't find room for so and so" game. So let's play it with South Africa and Joubert. There is no arguing with Pierre Spies, the physical specimen, but does the Springbok No8 know the inner workings of a game of rugby as well as Joubert?

Here he romped home for a brace and was the kingpin around whom Sarries worked their wicked moves. The result was an unseemly hiding for a champion club to inflict on runners-up in their lair. But it means nothing.

Unless, of course, there are cracks appearing in those nooks and crannies of Welford Road …